


Taking Flight

by SilentApocalypse



Series: when this is over [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: "Children Won the War" AU, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentApocalypse/pseuds/SilentApocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over, but that isn’t the end. Severa has always been a bit of a prickly person. Sarcasm has been the armor of her everyday life for as long as she can remember. But standing alone and lashing out at anyone who tries to get close is a lonely way to live. Letting her friends in is hard, but she knows it’s what she should really be doing if she ever wants to start moving on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Flight

Severa had become a light sleeper. After so many sudden attacks in the middle of the night she had started jumping up at the slightest noise, fully alert by the time her feet touched the ground. Unfortunately, that made sleeping through the night now that the war was over difficult, and once she was up it was hard to go back to sleep.

Just staring at the ceiling until she stopped feeling so tense wasn’t cutting it, especially since even the whistling of the wind in the drafty castle made her go rigid again. Then she grew frustrated because she was tired but completely unable to calm down enough to sleep.

Instead of stewing, she took to slipping out of her room and wandering the castle until the edge finally wore off. One night on a walk she ended up in the training hall. Kjelle spent most days there, but Severa had found herself avoiding it. In fact, she had barely even touched weapons if she didn’t have to.

Still, a few weeks away didn’t make years of training disappear. She reached for a practice sword automatically, letting it settle comfortably in her hand. An experimental twirl told her it didn’t handle quite the same as the real thing, but it was close enough.

It had been some time since she used one of the wooden swords. As soon as she was permitted to use real weapons she had stuck with them whenever possible, preferring to practice her technique on her own instead of sparring with anyone else. People kept their distance when she had a real blade in her hand, and then she didn’t have to hear the endless questions about why she didn’t want to wield a lance like her naturally talented pegasus knight mother.

 _Why couldn’t you be different_ was what the questions always boiled down to, though no one was ever impolite enough to just say it. Though she had tried lances briefly, she had soon chosen to focus on swords instead because she knew she’d never measure up to her mother and wanted to avoid being compared. She certainly wasn’t terrible at fighting just taken on her own merits, but it seemed no one wanted to judge her on those alone. In the end her hopes didn’t work out, but then again, she was the one alive after the war and her mother was the one who was dead.

Funny how that worked, but she thought that maybe she had actually been bested by her mother yet again. After all, the dead didn’t have to worry. Severa was the one standing in an empty room in the middle of the night, whiling away the time until her nerves stopped getting the better of her.

She ran through a few drills, going through the motions of sweeps, blocks, and thrusts, before running out of patience. _This is stupid_ , she told herself as she threw the practice sword aside. _There’s no reason I shouldn’t be asleep._ If she said it enough times maybe it would become true enough for her to believe.

But Severa was a person who didn’t adjust to change quickly. She was still carrying her feelings from so long ago, struggling to work out even after all this time what exactly her mother had meant to her. She had told herself so many times she had hated her talented mother. But there was a voice in her head that always countered she had been brave and strong and proved she cared for her daughter more than anyone else.

It was just so hard to accept the guilt for treating her mother as she had that went along with that line of thought. She would never have a chance to reconcile with her, so it was easier to just keep being angry instead of grieving over the fact she had never realized how much she had loved her until she was gone.

With a sigh, she picked up the sword and returned it to the rack. Kjelle would probably never let any of them hear the end of it if she didn’t clean up properly. As she turned to leave, she stopped short as her eyes hit the practice lances. She’d tried lances a bit as a child, realized she hadn’t been blessed with her perfect mother’s natural gifts, and promptly gave up. After all this time, maybe…

No, she decided. It was a bad idea that was only going to bring back bad memories, and besides, if someone saw her struggling to learn lance work they would probably laugh at her. She would have laughed at herself, anyway. Severa was a person who got by because she forced herself to focus solely on what she was good at. It let her tell herself that she was strong and good and worthwhile. For so long, she had avoided everything she didn’t have a knack for. Changing that now would be a betrayal of everything she had staked her pride on. She stalked out of the room and spent the hours until dawn trying not to think about the past.

***

It stormed a few nights later. The noise alone made it hard to sleep between the howling wind, pouring rain, and crackling thunder. That was without the fact that all the racket made it impossible to listen for anything, which did nothing to help Severa’s heightened paranoia.

Throwing herself out of bed, she headed to the inner sections of the castle. At least there it would be a little quieter. It was nearly completely dark once she got to the hallways with no windows and she ran one hand along the wall to find her way. Turning a corner, her foot caught on a blanket-wrapped lump, a muffled whimper coming from inside as she stumbled to regain her balance.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry!” Noire was quick to apologize as ever, her voice trembling as she bowed her head.

“It’s fine,” Severa hurriedly cut in before she could get any more worked up. “No big deal.”

Timidly, she looked up to meet her eyes. “Severa? I didn’t expect to see you out here.” Bundled up in the blanket, she hadn’t realized who had tripped over her. “Did something happen?”

She swallowed her retort because this was Noire, the girl who so easily frightened she instinctively apologized to the plants she tripped over. Her talisman had been able to make her fierce and even more abrasive than Severa was, but she hadn’t carried it since the war had ended. Surely she would have been searching for it in a panic if it was lost, so it seemed she was purposefully trying to get by without it.

The pause was getting long enough to notice as Severa struggled to come up with a way to reply that was neither overly cutting nor vulnerable. She settled on, “I don’t know how anyone can sleep with how loud the storm is.”

“I see.”

For a moment, they were both still. Then, Noire hesitantly asked, “Would you maybe like to sit here with me?”

After a half second, she continued, “Oh, if you don’t want to then that’s fine! I don’t want to get in your way or anything. I just… I was kind of scared, to be honest, and I thought maybe if you were willing we could keep each other company for a while? But I’m probably just being selfish, I don’t want to bother you or anything.”

Severa sighed. “Stop it. You’re giving me a headache. It’s fine.” Without further explanation, she leaned on the wall and slid down next to the other girl.

Quickly she scrambled up from the floor, unwrapping the blanket from her own body and draping one end over Severa’s shoulders. “It’s a little chilly out here,” she said, but her tone was much more cheerful than it had been moments before. She wrapped the other end around her own shoulders. “It’s not so bad now, though.”

The faintest sound of thunder could be heard in the distance and Noire shrank against her. There was something about her that had always made Severa feel a little protective, sort of like an older sister. “It’s not going to hurt you,” she whispered.

“I know,” she replied. “Um, Severa? Are you really sure you’re okay? Because it’s like you’re all…” She paused, searching for a word. “Brittle, I guess. It feels like you’re so tense you’re going to snap.”

Really, wasn’t that always the problem? On the surface, she was tough, but she was constantly on the verge of shattering inside under the slightest pressure. _Don’t think about it,_ she told herself, even though she knew consciously trying to push thoughts away only made them harder to ignore.

“Worry about yourself,” she muttered back, pulling the blanket tighter around them.

“You know,” she said softly, “I wish I was more like you. For as long as I’ve known you you’ve been strong and brave and resilient. It’s like no matter what happens, you’ll be able to withstand it.”

She wanted to tell Noire that no, she shouldn’t want to be like her. Hiding behind a mask of cold indifference hurt more with each passing day, and at this point it was hard to figure out how she could break from her carefully composed disguise. But her mouth was dry and she felt like she couldn’t speak, so she just shrugged and scooted closer under the blanket. Blessedly, Noire didn’t say anything else, content to sit in silence with her.

They didn’t say much else as they sat there in shared warmth for a few hours waiting for the storm to pass. When the weather finally calmed, Noire thanked her profusely. Severa just told her to go to bed already because she had to be exhausted too.

But when she got back to her room, she curled up under her own blankets and stared at the ceiling for a long, long time, wondering if anything had changed since all those years ago when she avoided everything about pegasus knights for the sake of her fragile, childish pride.

***

Sleeping was only getting harder as time wore on, and Severa was getting tired of being tired. She had always thought of herself as a person who would take action to change an unpleasant situation. It wasn’t like her to back down because she was concerned about what someone else would think of her, and by now she valued her lost peace of mind far more than her ego. It was well into midday when she dragged herself out of bed after a long night of little rest and she started searching the castle.

It took her quite some time, but she finally found who she was looking for. Cynthia was sitting in the library, yawning widely. She was still recovering from falling off her pegasus. Broken bones were one of the very few things that managed to slow her down, and her ribs were still bothering her enough that she wasn’t pushing it. “Not often you’re here, Severa!” she greeted cheerfully.

“I could say the same to you,” she sniped back, reminding herself to take a breath and calm down. She had come to ask for a favor, and that meant making herself vulnerable, instincts be damned. Luckily, Cynthia was used to her prickliness to the point her smile didn’t even waver. “I actually wanted to ask you a favor.”

“That’s not something I hear every day, either.” She frowned slightly. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just a dumb question. If you laugh then I’ll… I’ll…” She felt frazzled enough that she was having a hard time coming up with a credible threat.

But in spite of that, the pegasus knight nodded solemnly. She knew that for Severa to be acting like this it had to be something important to her. “No laughing. Promise.”

“As long as you understand. I was wondering if you maybe… well… could help me learn how to ride a pegasus?”

It was completely silent for several seconds as they both just stared at each other. “Why would you think I’d laugh at that?”

 _Because everyone should laugh. I want to laugh at myself for wanting to do what I’ve always promised myself I wouldn’t_. “Because it’s stupid,” she mumbled instead.

“It’s not stupid.” That familiar grin crossed her face. “I would always be happy to teach a friend how to ride a pegasus. I’m especially glad to be able to help you, Severa!”

“And why is that?” she asked crossly. _Because my mother was a legend?_

With a little giggle, she replied, “Well, because you could really use some more fun in your life, of course! Oh, I’m sorry. I know I promised not to laugh, but I’m not laughing at you, really, more just at the question, you know?”

The giggling was the last thing on Severa’s mind. “You think I need more fun in my life?”

“Well, yeah, of course.” Now she was frowning again. “I think everyone could, you know?”

“Maybe. Well, whatever. You’ll teach me, then?”

“Yeah! My pegasus is really friendly so I’m sure she’ll be polite if you’d like to try. Actually, we could go now if you want.”

“Now?” she repeated incredulously. “You’re still injured, aren’t you?”

“ _I’m_ not the one who’s going to be riding, silly.” She patted Severa on the shoulder. “That’s your job. There really isn’t anything I could show you that you wouldn’t learn faster by just doing it for yourself. Don’t worry, I’ll tell her to go slow and stay low to the ground. And I’ll teach you how to fall before you start. I’m sure Gerome will help me demonstrate that, because I can’t exactly do that myself right now. You’re a lot less klutzy than I am, so I doubt you’ll really need it. But, well, accidents do happen. As I should know.” She flashed a toothy grin. “Well, come on!” With an abundance of energy, she got up and took the other girl by the hand.

Severa was shocked enough she couldn’t help but laugh at herself. All that time and worrying for this? It seemed so moronic that there wasn’t anything to do but find it funny.

Frowning, Cynthia asked, “Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Never better,” Severa answered, spinning on her heels. “What are we waiting for?”

The two girls chatted away as they headed to the stables, and Severa wondered why she hadn’t done this sooner. But she was done regretting the things she hadn’t done in the past. Instead, she wanted to focus on what she could do and move forward. She needed to do something if she wasn’t happy with how she felt and facing her mother’s memory seemed like a good step in the right direction.

It was true she would never be able to truly apologize to her mother. But honoring her by learning how to ride a pegasus seemed a fine way to pay her respects, and Severa knew her mother would be smiling at her attempts, however clumsy they were.

Besides, her genius mother had always seemed to know everything. She had probably known how much her daughter loved her long before Severa even realized it herself.


End file.
